There is no such thing as bad publicity. But the PR adage seems to have been overlooked by America's energy lobby, whose attacks on a documentary on natural gas drilling have dramatically raised the film's pre-Oscar buzz.

The attacks – including a demand to strike the film, Gasland, from Oscar contention – have brought a fresh burst of public attention to the documentary as well as its subject, a controversial method of natural gas extraction known as hydraulic fracturing.

In the countdown to the 27 February awards ceremony, Energy in Depth, an industry lobbying group set up by Halliburton, BP, Shell and other companies, has stepped up its attacks on Gasland.

The attention has been a bonanza for the film-maker, Josh Fox. Gasland – though it became a sensation online for scenes of flames shooting out of a kitchen tap – had only a very limited commercial release. He has noted Energy in Depth on his Facebook page and elsewhere to help publicise the film.

But the inadvertent consequences of their campaign does not appear to have given Energy in Depth much pause.

Last Thursday, the organisation – which has a whole section devoted to Gasland on its website – took a swipe at Fox and the actor, Mark Ruffalo, who is also up for an Oscar, for visiting Congress to support a bill for government regulation of hydraulic fracturing.

"It's clear that this event, scripted by a Hollywood publicist one week before the Academy Awards, is focused on achieving staged drama and inside-the-beltway chatter," Energy in Depth said in a statement.

The industry lobby had earlier written to the Motion Picture Academy arguing that the film was ineligible for an Oscar in the documentary category because it contains inaccuracies.

"The many errors, inconsistencies and outright falsehoods catalogued ... cast serious doubt on Gasland's worthiness for this most honoured award, and directly violate both the letter and spirit of the published criteria that presumably must be met by Gasland's competitors in this category," the letter said.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, injects chemicals and huge quantities of water at high pressure up to 8,000 feet deep to crack open the rock and release natural gas. Its development has helped fuel a natural gas boom across America, but there is growing evidence that it is contaminating water and leaking into homes.

Fox called on Barack Obama to ban hydraulic fracturing until more is known about the environmental dangers.

"The point is, that he has to wake up to this now," Fox said. "It's been flying under the radar for long enough," he said. "We're seeing hundreds of incidents on a smaller scale every day spread out across the United States."

Fox set out to make his film in 2008, when he received a letter from a natural gas company offering $100,000 (£62,000) to lease his land for drilling.

In the past five years, America has turned increasingly to natural gas for electricity supply. Natural gas generated about 25% of US electricity last year, up from about 12% in 1996.

Some proponents – such as the Texas oil mogul T Boone Pickens who has invested heavily in natural gas – have argued that it could help move America towards a lower carbon economy. But there is growing evidence of environmental dangers from Colorado to Oklahoma to Pennsylvania of the costs of an industry which so far has only minimal government oversight. The Environmental Protection Agency is also reviewing the science on its potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The natural gas drilling industry has largely evaded environmental regulation thanks to the intervention of Dick Cheney. The former vice-president's 2005 energy policy freed drilling companies from reporting on chemicals used in fracturing.